Ben Davis

Ben A. Davis is an American art critic who writes about art and art theory from a Marxist perspective. His best-known work, 9.5 Theses on Art and Class, was published by Haymarket Books in 2013. His second book, Art in the After-Culture: Capitalist Crisis and Cultural Strategy, was published in 2022 and, like its predecessor, is a collection of Davis's cultural essays.

Career In 2001, Davis earned a BA from Macalester College. He was the college's first student to major in the newly created department of Humanities, Media and Cultural Studies (HMCS). His focus was critical theory. After graduating, he worked in a New York City bookstore. In 2004, he permanently settled in New York, "becoming an art critic full time after stints tutoring criminal justice students and writing about flower shows and poetry slams for a community newspaper in Queens." He resides in Brooklyn.

Davis's commentary on contemporary art has appeared in a wide range of publications including Adbusters, Art Papers, ArtReview, The Brooklyn Rail, Frieze, Jacobin, New York, Slate, and The Village Voice. He was co-editor of Elements of Architecture, the catalogue for the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, curated by Rem Koolhaas.

In 2011, The New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl referred to Davis as "among the excellent younger critics now." In 2019, Harvard's Nieman Journalism Lab labeled him one of the five most influential art critics in the U.S. The discussion generated by the pamphlet drew notice in The New York Times, and was "one of the most talked about sessions" of the #class show, according to Sarah Thornton. The pamphlet contains a series of numbered proclamations, for example: "9.5 Theses on Art and Class" was later translated into several languages. Upon its publication, 9.5 Theses on Art and Class received positive notice in both the mainstream and art press. New York magazine called it "a riveting manifesto". The Stranger ended its review by stating, "We should hold town hall meetings on this book." Although The Village Voice review faulted Davis for "too readily" using Marxism as an explanatory model, the review placed him in an honorable tradition of pamphleteers, and concluded by stating, "On 9.5 Theses, the verdict is crystal: This is one helluva pamphlet."

In a September 2013 review in the socialist magazine Jacobin, Rachel Wetzler wrote that Davis's arguments "too often take the form of smug, self-righteous dismissals that convey only his disapproval rather than making a case for why the reader should agree." Later that year, Jacobin published Davis's rebuttal to the Wetzler review.

In a list of the "10 Best Art Books of 2013", art critic Hrag Vartanian gave 9.5 Theses on Art and Class an Honorable Mention, crediting Davis with "[bringing] the discussion of class, artists, and the art market center stage in a way that [goes] beyond fleeting auction reports and perpetual gallery gripes." The book was nominated for Best Work of Criticism by the International Association of Art Critics. Lisa Hilton of The Times Literary Supplement also put Art in the After-Culture on her 2022 list of best books, praising the writing as "... glistening, passionate yet coolly precise.... Brilliant, revelatory, urgent."